Quotes from Ernst Toller

Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. What separated a German mother from a French mother?

As a boy I used to go to the Chamber of Horrors at the annual fair, to look at the wax figures of Emperors and Kings, of heroes and murderers of the day. The dead now had that same unreality, which shocks without arousing pity.

Each had defended his own country; the Germans Germany, the Frenchmen France; they had done their duty.

Later we learned that it was one of our own men hanging on the wire. Nobody could do anything for him; two men had already tried to save him, only to be shot themselves.

At that moment of realization I knew that I had been blind because I had wished not to see; it was only then that I realised, at last, that all these dead men, French and Germans, were brothers, and I was the brother of them all.

How happy I am to go to the front at last. To do my bit. To prove with my life what I think I feel.

We thrust our fingers into our ears to stop its moan; but it was no good; the cry cut like a drill into our heads, dragging minutes into hours, hours into years. We withered and grew old between those cries.

I was at the front for thirteen months, and by the end of that time the sharpest perceptions had become dulled, the greatest words mean.

And the spirit of revolution will not die while the hearts of these workers continue to beat.

The revolution is like a vessel filled with the pulsating heartbeat of millions of working people.

We revolutionaries acknowledge the right to revolution when we see that the situation is no longer tolerable, that it has become a frozen. Then we have the right to overthrow it.

Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. What separated a German mother from a French mother?

Gradually I became aware of details: a company of French soldiers was marching through the streets of the town. They broke formation, and went in single file along the communication trench leading to the front line. Another group followed them.

We were all of us cogs in a great machine which sometimes rolled forward, nobody knew where, sometimes backwards, nobody knew why.

En este libro no habrán de ser objeto de embellecimiento los defectos y las culpas, los fallos y las insuficiencias, propios o ajenos. Para ser honesto, hay que saber. Para ser valiente, hay que comprender. Para ser justo no es lícito olvidar. Cuando la barbarie aplasta bajo su yugo hay que luchar, no puedo uno permitirse el permanecer callado. Quien calle en un época como esta traiciona su misión humana.

Most people have no imagination. If they could imagine the sufferings of others, they would not make them suffer so. What separated a German mother from a French mother? Slogans which deafened us so that we could not hear the truth.

Um ehrlich zu sein, muß man wissen. Um tapfer zu sein, muß man verstehen. Um gerecht zu sein, darf man nicht vergessen. Wenn das Joch der Barbarei drückt, muß man kämpfen und darf nicht schweigen. Wer in solcher Zeit schweigt, verrät seine menschliche Sendung.

Kein Volk ist wahrhaft frei ohne die Freiheit seiner Nachbarn. Die Politiker belügen sich selbst und belügen die Bürger, sie nennen ihre Interessen Ideale, für diese Ideale, für Gold, für Land, für Erz, für Öl, für lauter tote Dinge sterben, hungern, verzweifeln die Menschen. Überall. Die Frage der Kriegsschuld verblaßt vor der Schuld des Kapitalismus.

Nichts belastet den politisch Handelnden schuldvoller als Verschweigen, er muß die Wahrheit sagen, sei sie noch so drückend, nur die Wahrheit steigert die Kraft, den Willen, die Vernunft.

As a rule, people are afraid of truth. Each truth we discover in nature or social life, destroys the crutches on which we need to lean.

Gradually I became aware of details: a company of French soldiers was marching through the streets of the town. They broke formation, and went in single file along the communication trench leading to the front line. Another group followed them.

Slogans which deafened us so that we could not hear the truth.

The working class will not halt until socialism has been realized.

Soldiers and peasants lived together on friendly terms; they knew each other and their everyday routines, and trusted each other; they shook their heads together over the war.